Jason Stringer

Lately, whenever I make time to write, I write on screenplay pages, not here. Even in this case, I’m posting a video I recently made with my two boys. A day at the playground can yield fulfilling results.

“That’s pretty good, actually. Wouldn’t change much about it,” my wife casually informs me, flopping the flimsy 7-page screenplay onto the table in front of me. I’m hunched over the laptop again, my face illuminated in blue light from the screen.

She turns her back to me and heads to the nearby kitchen counter to whip up a fresh coffee. The kettle has just boiled.

This is very unlike my darling wife. ‘Pretty good’? ‘Well done’? Who is this person and what has she done with my wife? She usually tears out my soul, hands my writing back to me laughing whilst saying ‘Nice try, baby…’

I grab the screenplay and flick through the pages. Yep. I gave her the right one. This one in particular is a unique idea I’ve had for a while, that I’ve finally been able to put on paper. I’m hoping to throw it in the mix for production funding this month.

“You… liked it?” I ask, fishing for the truth.

“Yeah, loved it. One of your better ones.”

I’m a deer in headlights. The sound of her spoon clapping the side of her mug as she stirs her drink fills the silence between us. Better challenge her, I decide.

“Okay, so, when the dog in the park–”

She interrupts, “I laughed! It actually made me giggle out loud. That bit was clever!”

Laughed? Clever? OK what the fuck is going on!?

She takes a sensual sip of her coffee (she’s really gorgeous. Anything she does is sensual to me…). I’m feeling intimidated despite the compliments. I feel like I’m being tested.

“Okay, well, I was thinking about one moment,” I begin, hoping to extract some constructive feedback, “where David (the main character) goes to the chemist…”

“Chemist?”

“Yeah, to buy the drugs, remember?”

She takes another sip instead of answering. I leaf through the screenplay again to absolutely make sure I printed the right one. Everything seems in order. I even find the scene in question.

“Here, page three.”

She moseys over and takes a look over my shoulder. Her wedding ring taps the side of the mug.

“Oh wow, I never read that page.”

What?!

“How do you skip an entire page?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t remember this chemist stuff, he went straight from his home to the job, and then the park.”

She whips the screenplay out of my hands and proceeds to re-read from page one.

I return to faceboo… erm, production budgets and video editing. The sound of her leafing through the pages becomes more violent and swift. She finishes, slaps the screenplay on my keyboard hard and announces:

“That’s fucked!” She returns to the kitchen to rinse her now-empty coffee mug. I’m a deer in headlights again.

“Um, fucked?”

“Yeah! That scene. That page. It ruins the whole thing.”

“Ruins it? But…”

“When I read it the first time and I accidentally skipped that page, okay, but it worked a lot better without it.”

Bemused, I again leaf to page three and notice the scene in question pretty much dominates the entire page.

“Um, so you’re saying we don’t need to go to the chemist in any way? We can skip it? But, I liked that scene…”

She lowers her brow at me and darts that look at me. That look that says: You already know the answer.

And that, my friends, is how my most brutal critic, my darling wife, saved my 7-page short screenplay from being overly lengthy fluff and culled it to a tidy 5 pages. Because she accidentally forgot to read an entire page. It was meant to be. I now have a screenplay I’m very happy with, primed for a funding application.

Fate has a funny way of ironing things out.

Yes, I am aware of how barren posts have become– several people in the last week alone pointed out that my blog is dying a miserable death. But I refuse to do one of those blog posts. You know the kind.

“So yeah, I haven’t posted in a while, been really busy and stuff…”

I fucking hate those.

I can’t even say I’ve been busy, anyway… not in the wold of creativity and filmmaking.  2011, though, is the year where I throw many and pull no punches.

I don’t expect you to believe me. After all, it’s been a long time between drinks. But, I know– and so do you– that proof will be in the pudding.

Standby.

It’s been over a year since I wrapped principal photography on the short film That Year They Were Bridesmaids with a small, talented crew in Perth’s Southern suburbs. Since filming finished, the project has bounced around in limbo waiting for completion–and I can trace it all back to one crucial decision we made during day two of production.

It was a gloomy day and the wind had picked up considerably by late afternoon. Production had run over schedule and the sun was due to set in a couple of hours. The 1st assistant director, producer, cinematographer and I gathered away from the crew to quickly discuss if we should “push on”. Should we complete all the shots scheduled for today regardless of elements, or move them to a later date?

We were shooting digitally, but the shots we were discussing were due to be shot on 8mm film. Technically, they were less involved and could easily be shot with a small crew of just four or five people the following weekend.

The cinematographer didn’t like how little light was going to be left, and only black clouds were evident in the sky. The AD added there was still a good hour at the current location before we could move on to the 8mm shots being discussed…

“Scrap it,” I announced. “We’ll easily pick them up later, and we can concentrate on getting the rest of today’s shots perfect.” Everyone agreed, and that’s what we did.

It was an easy decision to make because we were in a great groove on that shoot. People were working well together and there was no reason to doubt picking up 6 shots on another day, outside of what we had scheduled, wouldn’t happen.

I should have known better.

That weekend came and went, and we agreed to move it down one more weekend. Then it rained. Then it rained again the following weekend. Key people started picking up work and, understandably, other commitments had to start taking priority. Weeks went by… and then some more.

Eventually the producer assembled a small team, the required props, talent, the 8mm cameras and stock (which was being kept fresh in the fridge the whole time) on a frisky October weekend. Unfortunately, the elements weren’t right. It was again wintery, gray, windy and cold. The cinematographer was worried it would be a waste of (expensive) stock because there wasn’t enough light. Art Department weren’t impressed with the conditions; they needed as little wind as possible. And I, as director, wanted those things just right if we were to proceed. We once again postponed the shooting of these pesky 8mm shots. We agreed to wait for Spring to settle in better, when the cold would be gone and the majority of days were perfect.

But the weekends kept rolling on. Getting everyone free on a date to lock-in was become agonising while the film sat quietly on a hard drive, waiting patiently to be cut and delivered.

We eventually rolled 8mm film through the gate in February 2010—right in the middle of Summer. The film has been developed and is now being cut into the movie as I had always intended. And it looks great!

This was a lesson I had already learned and that’s probably what stings most. I was blinded by the fact that the shots we would have to pick-up seemed simple enough. Just an 8mm camera and some props… but it’s never as easy as it seems.

Next time I’m directing on an indie set and it is suggested we ‘pick-up these shots on a later weekend’, I’ll refuse.

I’m notorious for projects dragging out far too long and it is something I want to obliterate from my future projects. Post production is now built into all schedules. Submission deadlines for festivals help meet these targets.

So where is this film? When will That Year They Were Bridesmaids be watchable? I’ll have to answer these questions in upcoming posts.

A short video I put together using home movies I took during the month of April this year. I plan on doing one for each month. Planning and doing are two very different things.

I cut this video to at least try and remain creative, because I’m creatively exhausted lately (as you can probably tell by the lack of posts this year). A very strange time for me. Nothing is coming out. I’m keeping myself busy as a stay-at-home Dad, raising my boys and looking after my wife as needed. In my spare time I’ve been writing and working on the occasional project, mostly Reel Thinker, a new movie web venture I launched with fellow graduate Robin Hare. Apart from that, I haven’t even had an itch to scratch… but I know it’s back there. I can feel it brewing.